“Infant Mental Health is a leading area of job growth in the mental health field. Earning this certificate will expand your career opportunities enormously…”
--President Jim Nolan

“There is nothing automatic about it. The kind of brain that each baby develops is the brain that comes out of his or her particular experiences with people.”
Sue Gerhardt, Why Love Matters

Skills you will learn:
How to recognize and work with infant mental health issues
How to establish healthy boundaries as a practitioner supporting infant mental health

Skills you will learn:
How to become conscious of and assess one’s own internal process when working with infants and families.
To identify key domains of infant development while deepening sensitivity and awareness of
child-caregiver interactions

Skills you will learn:
Strategies for assessing problems within the infant-caregiver relationship and selecting appropriate interventions
To identify ethical issues in working with infants and their families

Infant Mental Health

Infant Mental Health Certificate Program

The Infant Mental Health Certificate is designed to offer participants knowledge, insights, and skills related to working with infants/young children and their caregivers. These courses introduce students to the field of infant mental health and facilitate development of clinical skills, including observing, thinking, and reflecting while working with infants/young children and their caregivers in a family system. Students will explore their own internal process while working with infants/young children and family systems. They will be exposed to current research supporting early intervention, assessment and treatment approaches. A total of 80 continuing education credit hours are required to complete this certificate or a combination of quarter credits and CECs.

64-HOUR CERTIFICATE
4 required core courses

*Southwestern College students may take these courses at the Continuing Education price unless they are using the course to meet graduate program degree requirements.

Focus on Attachment and Development: Use of Self, Theoretical Foundations, and Reflective Practices Relationship as Client: Child-Caregiver Dyadic Interaction and the Family SystemFrom Reflection to Action: Reflective Practice, Intervention, and Treatment

Skills you will learn

How to recognize and work with infant mental health issues

How to establish healthy boundaries as a practitioner supporting infant mental health

How to become conscious of and assess one’s own internal process when working with infants and families

To identify key domains of infant development while deepening sensitivity and awareness of child-caregiver interactions

Strategies for assessing problems within the infant-caregiver relationship and selecting appropriate interventions

To identify ethical issues in working with infants and their families

Where you might use these skills

Behavioral health agencies serving infants and families

Hospitals

In-home settings

Private practice

Day care sites and preschools

Program Director

Michelle Daly, MSPH, M.A., LPCC, ATR, IMH-E, has engaged in specialized training in Art Therapy; Grief, Loss, and Trauma; Interpersonal Neurobiology, Somatics and Action Methods, Psychosocial Oncology, and Infant Mental Health as well as various integrative trauma treatment modalities including EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. Michelle holds endorsement as an Infant Mental Health Specialist in the state of New Mexico and is working toward certification in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. She teaches all four courses, with a number of guest presenters from the community adding diversity to the experience. full bio

"Southwestern College has been an amazing part of my journey. This education endeavor as an art therapist has been a series of miracles for me. I've seen such a shift in myself. It's been a beautiful experience."

Crystal Hoffman, Graduate 2012

"I'm honored to be applying myself in a clinical environment and my experience at Southwestern enabled me to not only work as an art therapist but to facilitate mindfulness groups. A dream within a dream job I had not even fathomed."

Anna Mills, Graduate 2012

"My experience at Southwestern has been truly transformational. From the lessons learned in Consciousness class to my light figure project and vision quest. The impact on me and on my soul has been absolutely profound."

Stephanie Albury. Graduate 2012

"I'm thankful for everyone at Southwestern College...The deeper sense of myself has been seen, heard, honored and found. I'm so grateful to be able to share it with other people."

Cynthia Alexis, Graduate 2012

"I chose to go back to school for my 50th birthday. Little did I know I would be re-birthed... This is sacred work for me. May the work that we do be of service and benefit to all."

Eliza Buck, Graduate 2012

"This is the place that empowered me to do things the way that I do them, the way I'm good at doing them. I've come to surmise that to be an art therapist; to me means being an artist at therapy so the therapy is the art. The creative engagement with another, with each other, that is the art. "

Renee Borsberry, from Art Therapy Capstone Presentation, Fall 2012.

"The New Earth Institute of Southwestern College offers an array of educational and transformational opportunities to the community. It has been a rich and rewarding experience, enabling the college to grow and expand our mission of transforming consciousness through education. True education engages and awakens all parts of one’s being, allowing for the integration of mind, body and spirit. It cultivates reverence for life and nurtures us in the journey of the soul.”

Katherine Ninos, Vice President

"It has been an extremely amazing journey; the past two years. There has been a lot of pain, a lot of joy and a lot of learning. I think the thing I've learned the most about this experience is trusting the process."

Denise Moore, Graduate 2013

"I feel so much gratitude for being part of this caring, supporting, reflective, soulful community."